Gartner Says Worldwide Server Shipments Grew 9 Percent, While Industry Revenue Grew 4 Percent in Third Quarter of 2006

STAMFORD, Conn., November 21, 2006 — Worldwide server shipments for the third quarter of 2006 increased 9.1 percent over the same quarter last year, while worldwide server revenue for the same period climbed 4.4 percent according to Gartner, Inc.  Worldwide server revenues totaled $13 billion for the quarter, as worldwide servers shipments reached just over 2 million units.

"Blade servers and x86 servers in total continue to produce the highest growth levels within the overall market,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, research director at Gartner. “Both of these server types show ongoing installation growth at the front and middle of the Web server tiers.”

“RISC-Itanium Unix servers fell 6 percent in shipments for the quarter but grew slightly in revenue at 0.6 percent,” Mr. Hewitt said. “The top three shipment market leaders in order in this segment, Sun, IBM and HP retained their relative positions from the same quarter last year, but their revenue positions reshuffled with IBM taking the lead, Sun in second place and HP in third.”

IBM continued to lead the worldwide server market based on revenue (see Table 1). It had increases for the quarter in System p/p Series, System x/x Series and System z/z Series while it experienced declines only in System i/i Series which resulted in an overall revenue increase of 7.4 percent for the quarter. IBM did manage to increase its shipments 7.7 percent for the period but it lost 0.2 percent of shipment share compared to the same quarter a year ago.  IBM retained its overall blade server lead in both revenue and shipments as its blade server shipments increased 42.6 percent for the quarter.

Table 1
Worldwide: Server Vendor Revenue Estimates for Third Quarter of 2006 (U.S. Dollars)

Company	3Q06  Revenue	3Q06 Market Share (%)	3Q05 Revenue	3Q05 Market Share (%)	3Q05-3Q06 Growth (%)
IBM	4,381,081,126	33.7	4,077,673,183	32.7	7.4
Hewlett-Packard	3,290,294,803	25.3	3,501,106,331	28.1	-6.0
Dell Inc.	1,405,867,107	10.8	1,267,336,142	10.2	10.9
Sun Microsystems	1,314,466,628	10.1	1,054,107,265	8.5	24.7
Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens	634,331,211	4.9	694,265,998	5.6	-8.6
Other Vendors	1,987,589,577	15.3	1,866,320,481	15.0	6.5
Total	13,013,630,452	100.0	12,460,809,400	100.0	4.4

Source: Gartner Dataquest (November 2006)

In server shipments, while Hewlett-Packard dropped 0.5 percent in share, it retained its worldwide server shipment lead.  The share gap between it and second-place Dell dropped 0.8 percent for the quarter (see Table 2). HP’s year-on-year shipment growth was 7.2 percent in total. HP’s ProLiant product line showed a shipment increase of 8.4 percent while HP’s remaining server brands fell for the period. These shipment dynamics dragged HP’s overall revenue down 6.0 percent for the period.

For the second consecutive quarter, Sun Microsystems posted significant annual growth in both shipments and revenue for the period—6.4 and 24.7 percent respectively.  Dell also posted growth in both shipments (10.5 percent) and revenue (10.9 percent), while the 5^th global vendor, Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens fell 5.9 percent in shipments and 8.6 percent in revenue for the quarter.

Table 2
Worldwide: Server Vendor Shipments Estimates for Third Quarter of 2006 (Units)

Company	3Q06 Shipments	3Q06 Market Share (%)	3Q05 Shipments	3Q05 Market Share (%)	3Q05-3Q06 Growth (%)
Hewlett-Packard	540,609	26.5	504,466	27.0	7.2
Dell Inc.	459,950	22.5	416,148	22.2	10.5
IBM	332,777	16.3	308,898	16.5	7.7
Sun Microsystems	83,018	4.1	78,030	4.2	6.4
Fujitsu/Fujitsu Siemens	65,171	3.2	69,240	3.7	-5.9
Other Vendors	560,913	27.5	494,499	26.4	13.4
Total	2,042,438	100.0	1,871,281	100.0	9.1

Source: Gartner Dataquest (November 2006)

Additional information is available to subscribers of Gartner Dataquest’s Servers Quarterly Statistics Worldwide program. This program provides worldwide market size and share data by vendor revenue and unit shipments. Segments include: region, vendor, vendor brand, sub brand, CPU type, CPU group, Max CPU, platform, price band, operating systems and distribution channels.

 

Contact:


Christy Pettey
Gartner
+1 408 468 8312
christy.pettey@gartner.com


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